TRAINING & TEACHING
The days of slides and overhead projectors are thankfully behind us, but there is a lot more that lecturers and trainers can do to enhance understanding and learning and we don’t mean interactive white boards and PowerPoints.
Having originally acquired a Virtalis ActiveWall for research purposes, many of our academic customers decided to adapt their lectures to include 3D too. The results were uniformly startling. Complex topics like biochemistry, that lecturers admitted were well nigh impossible to explain with only 2D resources, became clear to many more students than would ever have been possible in the past and Virtalis has developed a VR-enabler for PyMOL, the leading package in this area. Lectures that were once deemed mind-boggling became, by common consent, accessible and fun.
We have numerous customers who routinely use VR for training their staff. The Royal Navy uses it for gunnery training and the RAF uses our Helicopter Crew Reality trainer, seen worldwide to be the blue riband of helicopter crew training. Risks to students and equipment are eliminated. Add tracking, sound and possibly virtual touch (haptics) too and information becomes assimilated easily through life-like experience.
Recent years have seen a trend for VR training within manufacturing. National Grid is typical. Both the diversity and complexity of their equipment formerly made it impossible for trainees to experience every equipment variant and train for every possible fault. Now they are able to simulate and encounter all potential faults and kit in interactive 3D - courtesy of Virtalis.
That third dimension really makes a difference.
"Instead of an individual experience, the Virtalis system uses stereoscopic projection to bring 3D to large audiences. We’re using the Virtalis system to help students visualise macro-molecular structures, such as proteins in 3D."
Vilmos Fülöp, University of Warwick Biochemist Professor.
"The VR enabling of PyMOL by Virtalis makes interacting with protein structures in the ActiveMove very easy. People are rather blasé when I introduce the system, but I wait for the inevitable gasps that follow as they see its power."
Dr. James Hinton, Centre for Protein Function & Structure within the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Arkansas.
"Helicopter Crew Reality is an excellent and unique procedural trainer. We have found that the time each rear crew student spends flying has been reduced from 15 hours to 12, because the re-fly rate has almost plummeted to zero. We can therefore confidently say that Helicopter Crew Reality has made our courses more successful whilst also reducing costs."
Squadron Leader Sue Brown, Head of SARTU.
